Cardiff School of English Communication and Philosophy

Phillip Roberts

Overview

PhD Research

I am exploring the political implication of philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s writings on cinema, focusing in particular on the links between this part of his work and his later conceptualisation of control.

Deleuze argued in a short article that a shifting system of control was in the process of replacing the disciplinary formation that had been analysed in the work of Michel Foucault. I aim to show that this shift towards a new regime of control was already outlined in his cinema works and that a rereading of these works in light of this shift can help us to outline a much neglected political dimension of Deleuze’s work on cinema and his conceptualisation of the time-image.

Academic Background

I have studied Film Theory and Sociology at Northumbria University before moving to the Centre for Critical Theory at Cardiff University to complete a PhD in Deleuze, Cinema and politics under Professor Ian Buchanan.

My main research interests are in the work of Gilles Deleuze, cinema and political control, focusing particularly on the means by which cinema and visual culture might be used as part of a self-organising social system. I have further interests in all aspects of cinema and cinema studies, in the work of Michel Foucault and Paul Virilio and have an extensive knowledge and interest in 1960s-1980s political film theory.

Publications

‘Signatures of the Invisible: on Schizoanalysis and Visual Culture’ in Schizoanalysis and Visual Culture edited by Phillip Roberts and Richard Rushton. Edinburgh University Press, 2011 (journal article).

The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri) in Scope Journal of Film and TV Studies, 2007.